open source marketer and community manager

Month: November 2006

Roberto is asking a very difficult question: is OGG/Theora a standard, after all? Since it is not documented in anything else but the source code, and the code is distributed under BSD license, what will make sure that nobody will start predatory practices on the format?

I understand Richard’s request though, based on practical terms as usual: there are no other formats for audio/video that aren’t encumbered by nasty patents.

Is OGG a standard? Probably not. Is it an open unencumbered format? I think so. Will my data be safe for future use? This is the most difficult question to answer: one can say that since the code is out there you can always write the decoder. But real life is more complex than that.

Things are going wild these days and it seems that there is never enough time to blog.

Yesterday I met with Simon Phipps in Milano at a Sun event here: charming chat, as usual, but this time with more spin because the Java-trap is finally disarmed and we had only to talk about positive things to do together. He was happy to hear about the Freedom Task Force, for example.

Besides that, this morning it was special also because FSF and FSFE are both on boingboing: FSFE for its Italian activity to free the postcodes and FSF for being quoted on Newsweek with DefectiveByDesign. It’s a sign that today will be a good day 🙂

I should be glad to discover that others are in the same stupid situation where Italy is: a private company is allowed by the government to hold a monopoly on basic data, like the ZIP codes (Codici di Avviamento Postale, CAP in Italian).

A group of Italian volunteers have rebuilt the database, although without geographical references and the list is distributed by Free Software Foundation Europe (in Italian only). UK’s approach is interesting too: check on the website.